I know care was taken while he was President to conceal it as much as possible. When people found out later that he’d been disabled while in office, was anyone shocked? Did anyone suggest he was wrong to hide it?
Good question. I don’t know the answer. He did conceal the extent of his disability, but it was no secret that he had polio (or possibly another paralytic disease), nor that he used a wheelchair. Wikipedia includes a link to a 1934 Time magazine article which mentions him rolling around in the White House in his wheelchair.
It hit the national news soon after he was diagnosed. Roosevelt was a national figure at the time – he had run for VP in 1920, and was considered a possibility for 1924. They actually had to sneak him out of Campobello so reporters wouldn’t know he was sick, though that only delayed things slightly*.
Roosevelt worked hard to make it seem he was not as badly stricken as he really was. He didn’t appear in public with the wheelchair (though it was known he used one) and trained himself to walk on his braces (which the public knew about). One of his tricks was to grab someone’s arm, holding on for dear life, while walking slowly, and, at the same time, appear to be in an animated conversation with the other man. He would give speeches by grabbing onto the podium and using that (Roosevelt developed great upper body strength to help him compensate).
People didn’t know the full extent until after his death.
*Interesting tidbit – the doctor who diagnosed FDR had been part of the surgical team that removed Grover Cleveland’s cancerous tumor in 1893.
The aftereffects of polio came in all degrees from simply having a weakness or limp to full-fledged paralysis needing a respirator to breathe. Roosevelt didn’t conceal the fact that he had polio (as RealityChuck said, it was national news) but he did try to present the image of health and vigor.
By 1945, he had pretty much dropped the pretense, as he said in his speech after the Yalta conference.
(Incidentally, that quote comes from the prepared remarks; he didn’t just ad-lib it.)
It’s also known that Roosevelt used a wheelchair when he visited wounded soldiers, and there are a few photos of him in a wheelchair.
Polio wasn’t uncommon in those days – in the late 1950s I went to school with kids who had polio. It’s my guess that people were surprised to learn how badly Roosevelt was affected, but not “shocked.”